The present invention relates to a system that is scalable and configurable to include vending equipment audit capabilities, a card reader assembly having a card reader processor interface board for accepting card identification data as payment for items vended, an interactive interface, and protocol for interconnecting the system to a computing platform, and support for a plurality of communication options that include wired, point-to-point wireless, and wireless wide area networked (WAN) solutions. In addition, the present invention also relates to a system and method of effectuating a payment device for accepting card ID data, authorizing the validity of the card ID data, facilitating a vending transaction, settling the transaction to effect payment for the vended goods and services, gathering DEX and MDB audit data from the vending equipment, and data communicating with a plurality of remote locations.
Recent trends in the vending industry have been to offer higher priced items out of vending equipment at traditionally unattended vending location. Higher priced item offers can result from the desire to vend larger portions of products such as the twenty-ounce soda bottle verse the twelve-ounce soda can. In other cases the higher priced items can be items that until recently may not have been considered for sale through vending equipment such as phone cards, disposable cameras, and frozen food entrees to name a few.
The vending industry""s desire to vend higher priced items has given rise to issues related to currency and inventory. For example, with the shift to vending twenty-ounce bottles many of the vending sales now involve more that one currency note, as an example two one-dollar bills to make a purchase. As a result the bill validator can fill to capacity with currency notes before all the items in the vending equipment have been sold. With a bill acceptor filled to capacity the vending equipment may not be able to transact another vending sale and place itself out-of-service. As a result vending operators can typically find themselves restocking vending equipment that still has product available for sale but because of the inability to take additional currency notes the vending equipment could not sell the inventory.
In addition, with many beverage type vending machines the shift from the twelve-ounce can to the twenty-ounce bottle created coin mechanism issues. In moving to the larger size beverage the average price can move from typically slightly less than a dollar where little change was required when a dollar note was used for payment to slightly more than a dollar where the better part of a dollar in change can be required when two one-dollar notes are used for payment for a vend. Resultant from this price move not only do the bill validators fill to capacity faster and stop working sooner, but the coin mechanism can be required to supply a customer with more change on each vend depleting a coin mechanism coin supply faster. Once the coin change supply is depleted the vending machine may be rendered out-of-service.
In addition to the new burden on bill acceptors and coin mechanism resultant from the sale of higher priced items other issues related to the vending of higher priced items can arise. Once such issue can be that a customer may not have enough money on-hand to effectuate the vending purchase. In the case of phone cards, cameras, and frozen food vend prices may range from several dollars to forty dollars, fifty dollars, or more. In many cases the customer may have the desire to purchase the high priced item but simply lacks the amount of currency required to effectuate the purchase. In other cases the customer may be reluctant to trust the vend worthiness of the vending equipment with what the customer considers to be a significant amount of money.
As the proliferation of higher priced vend items continues to become more pervasive in today""s society the vending industry has become increasingly concerned about tracking inventory and the operational status of the vending equipment remotely. It is considered a general belief within the vending industry that remotely monitoring vending equipment can optimize a route driver""s daily activity and reduce operational costs associated with the sales and delivery of products to the vending equipment.
To date auditing devices have been designed to be placed inside the vending equipment or held in the hand of a route collector for the purpose of gathering vending equipment inventory and operational data which can later be downloaded to a computer. These devices however have been costly to manufacture, install, maintain, and operate. As such the total cost of the technology verse the savings on the operational costs associated with the sales and delivery of products to date have not made for a sound or compelling business model. As a result the vending industry has been slow to adopt xe2x80x98auditxe2x80x99 only technology.
The cost benefit model of the xe2x80x98auditxe2x80x99 hardware may not be the only issue hampering the proliferation of xe2x80x98auditxe2x80x99 only device. Data communication costs, the costs of getting the data back to a central computer center can be a significant limitation on getting vending equipment remotely xe2x80x98auditxe2x80x99 capable or as it is commonly referred to in the vending industry as xe2x80x98onlinexe2x80x99.
Such telecommunication costs can include the cost of running a telephone line to the vending equipment. In many cases the vending equipment may be in a location not conducive to having a dedicated phone line installed proximate to the vending equipment, such as in a concrete basement, on a golf course, in a shopping mall, or on a university campus to name a few. Once a telephone line is installed there can be monthly service charges incurred from the telecommunication company providing the service. These costs alone can in effect nullify the savings of having the vending equipment xe2x80x98onlinexe2x80x99.
To avoid the high expense of running dedicated telephone lines to vending equipment the vending industry has pursued wireless wide area network (WAN) options. Implementing a wireless WAN has typically involved purchasing additional wireless hardware, and trying to integrate the wireless hardware with the xe2x80x98auditxe2x80x99 hardware. If the integration effort was successfully the hardware, service and maintenance costs of the combined solution were typically significantly increased compared to the xe2x80x98auditxe2x80x99 device only solution costs. In addition, the service and maintenance required for the combined wireless system is typically different then the non-wireless xe2x80x98auditxe2x80x99 device only solution.
In addition to the increased hardware costs for the wireless WAN solution, the wireless communication service fees paid to the wireless network provider can be more then those fees charged by the communication companies providing telephone line service. A technology solution and service fee structure that could effectively nullify the anticipated sales and delivery savings from having the vending equipment xe2x80x98onlinexe2x80x99.
In part a long felt need for a solution related to a cost effective system and method for remotely auditing vending equipment, and for providing additional payment options at the point of sale for goods and services vended from vending equipment, coupled with the industries short coming in these areas, some of which were mentioned above give rise to the present invention.
The present invention relates to a system that is scalable and configurable to include vending equipment audit capabilities, a card reader assembly having a card reader processor interface board for accepting card identification data as payment for items vended, an interactive interface and protocol for interconnecting the system to a computing platform, and support for a plurality of communication options that include wired, point-to-point wireless, and wireless WAN solutions.
The present invention also relates to a system and method which effectuates an interactive interface and protocol for interfacing the system to and data communicating with a computing platform, wherein the computing platform can elect to control by way of the interactive interface and protocol the vending transaction cycle or alternatively elect to monitor the system by way of the interactive interface and protocol allowing the system to control the vending transaction cycle.
The present invention also relates to a system and method of effectuating a payment device for accepting card ID data, authorizing the validity of the card ID data, facilitating a vending transaction, settling the transaction to effect payment for the vended goods and services, gathering DEX and MDB audit data from the vending equipment, and data communicating with a plurality of remote locations.
The present invention also relates to a system having a plurality of configurable communication options for data communicating to a plurality of remote locations. Such communication options include local area network connection, telephone line, wireless point-to-point where the system data communicates wirelessly to a local transceiver base unit which has access to a telephone line thereby giving the system wireless access to a telephone line, and wireless network data communication access, wherein a data modem connects the system to a WAN for data communication access to a plurality of remote locations.
The present invention also relates to a system and method for implementing an MDB protocol gateway for the purpose of supporting a plurality of peripheral devices each of which may be implementing a different version of MDB protocol then the vending equipment""s vending machine controller (VMC).
The present invention also relates to a system and method for authorizing and settling card transactions with a processing bureau where the authorization process can be performed by the system locally eliminating the need for data communication with a remote processing bureau, and for processing international card transactions from a single country, wherein international currency conversion processing fees are minimized.
The present invention also relates to a store and forward data network system and method, wherein data gathered at a central server from a plurality of remote systems installed in a plurality of vending equipment is converted as required and made available to a plurality of other servers for the purpose of using the data to manage a vending business and or supplying data to a backend management system.
The present invention also relates to the system 500 being packaged in a semiconductor creating a single chip system 500 solution.